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UW Faculty Have Until May 15 to Apply for Supercomputer Use

April 21, 2014

University of Wyoming faculty
members interested in using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC) in
Cheyenne for their computational research have until May 15 to submit an
application to request a large core-hour allocation on the powerful machine for
a year.

Any request for more than 200,000
core hours is considered a large request. Requests average about 5 million to 6
million core hours per project, says Bryan Shader, UW’s special assistant to
the vice president of research and economic development, and a mathematics
professor.

“In January’s round of large
allocations, four UW projects were awarded a total of 15.8 million core hours,”
says Shader, who also serves as co-chair of the Wyoming-NCAR Alliance Resource
Allocations Panel (WRAP), a group that chooses which projects receive core-hour
allocations on Yellowstone, the nickname for the Cheyenne supercomputer.

Yellowstone currently supports 30
active projects.

“This ranks the University of
Wyoming No. 1 in active projects and No. 1 in total users at the NWSC among all
other universities,” Shader says. “Several requests for allocations for new
projects, as well as renewals of existing projects, are anticipated.”

The Wyoming share of the NWSC
resources is currently 75 million core hours of computing on Yellowstone;
around 400 terabytes of high-performance storage on GLADE; and 5 petabytes of
longer-term tape storage on HPSS.

Successful allocation requests include benchmarking studies
on a smaller scale and on a smaller computer. These benchmark studies can be
performed using Mount Moran, the nickname for UW’s Advanced Research Computing
Center (ARCC).

Most recent supercomputing projects

Seven projects received
allocations in November 2012; another six were selected in February 2013; four
more were chosen during July 2013; and four were picked in December 2013.

The most recent projects, currently
in progress, are:

-- Felipe Pereira, a School of
Energy Resources professor
of mathematics and petroleum engineering, “A Novel Uncertainty Quantification
Framework for Subsurface Flows Coupled with Geomechanics Area of Interest:
Mathematics and Statistics.” This project is developing improved methods for
predictive simulation of subsurface flows that incorporate dynamic data to
reduce uncertainty of the predictions. Dynamic data includes saturation
measurements taken by CT scanners in lab-scale problems and production curves
in field-scale operations.

-- Jordan Hayes, a doctoral
student in geology and geophysics, “Imaging Deep Critical Zone Structure with
Seismic Waveform Tomography.” Hayes’ research is conducted under the
supervision of Po Chen, a UW professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics.

The project will use newly
developed modeling techniques and high-resolution seismic refraction to shed
insight into water storage and groundwater flow, and how near-surface rocks in
the critical zone weather over time. The project is part of the Wyoming Center
for Environmental Hydrology and Geophysics (WyCEHG), which is
funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The project simulates large wind
farms at high resolution. UW developed simulation software that is coupled with
NCAR’s Weather Research Forecast model, RF, to provide simulated wind-farm
performance in a variety of weather scenarios. The work will develop methods
that will allow for accurate simulations that can be used in the design of a
large wind farm. This research is partially supported by a grant from the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research.

Jay Sitaraman, an SER assistant professor
of mechanical engineering, and Jonathan Naughton, a professor of mechanical
engineering, are co-investigators of the project.

-- Xiaohong Liu, Wyoming
Excellence Chair in Climate Modeling, Department of Atmospheric Science, “Investigating the Impact of
Absorbing Aerosols on the Regional Climate of North America Under Current and
Future Climate Conditions.”

His project goal is to better
understand the role of black carbon emitted by wildfires and mineral dust
lofted into the atmosphere from arid regions on decadal climate variation. This
will ultimately lead to better climate prediction capabilities. The project is
supported by a Department of Energy and NSF award, titled “Wildfire and
Regional Climate Variability -- Mechanisms, Modeling and Prediction.”

Project collaborators include
Yuhang Wang of Georgia State University; Chun Zhao of Pacific Northwest
Laboratory; Hanqin Tian of Auburn University; and Yongqiang Liu of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.

The NWSC is the result of a
partnership among the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the operating entity for NCAR;
UW; the state of Wyoming; Cheyenne LEADS; the Wyoming Business Council; and
Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power. The NWSC is operated by NCAR under sponsorship
of the NSF.

The NWSC contains one of the
world's most powerful supercomputers (1.5 petaflops, which is equal to 1.5
quadrillion mathematical operations per second) dedicated to improving
scientific understanding of climate change, severe weather, air quality and other
vital atmospheric science and geo-science topics. The center also houses a
premier data storage (16 petabytes) and archival facility that holds historical
climate records and other information.

Photo:This computer simulation of a
wind turbine at work is part of a project in which UW Professor Dimitri
Mavriplis is using Yellowstone, the nickname for the NWSC supercomputer. UW
faculty members have until May 15 to submit their applications for the latest round
of core-hour allocations for use of the supercomputer. (Visualization by Min
Shih and Kwan-Lui Ma, University of California-Davis)